GENERAL KEITH BECOMES AN OVERSEER
When the war closed, though it was not recognized at first, the old
civilization of the South passed away. Fragments of the structure that
had once risen so fair and imposing still stood for a time, even after
the foundations were undermined: a bastion here, a tower there; but in
time they followed the general overthrow, and crumbled gradually to
their fall, leaving only ruins and decay.
For a time it was hoped that the dilapidation might be repaired and the
old life be lived again. General Keith, like many others, though broken
and wasted in body, undertook to rebuild with borrowed money, but with
disastrous results. The conditions were all against him.
Three or four years' effort to repair his fallen fortunes only plunged
him deeper in debt. General Keith, like most of his neighbors and
friends, found himself facing the fact that he was hopelessly insolvent.
As soon as he saw he could not pay his debts he stopped spending and
notified his creditors.
"I see nothing ahead of me," he wrote, "but greater ruin. I am like a
horse in a quicksand: every effort I make but sinks me deeper."
Some of his neighbors took the benefit of the bankrupt-law which was
passed to give relief. General Keith was urged to do likewise, but
he declined.
"Though I cannot pay my debts," he said, "the least I can do is to
acknowledge that I owe them. I am unwilling to appear, even for a short
time, to be denying what I know to be a fact."
He gave up everything that he owned, reserving nothing that would bring
in money.
When Elphinstone was sold, it brought less than the debts on it. The old
plate, with the Keith coat-of-arms on it, from which generations of
guests had been served, and which old Richard, the butler, had saved
during the war, went for its weight in silver. The library had been
pillaged until little of it remained. The old Keith pictures, some of
them by the best artists, which had been boxed and stored elsewhere
until after the war, now went to the purchaser of the place for less
than the price of their frames. Among them was the portrait of the man
in the steel coat and hat, who had the General's face.
What General Keith felt during this transition no one, perhaps, ever
knew; certainly his son did not know it, and did not dream of it until
later in life.
It was, however, not only in the South that fortunes were lost by the
war. As vast as was the increase of riches at the North among those who
stayed at home, it did not extend to those who took the field. Among
these was a young officer named Huntington, from Brookford, a little
town on the sunny slope that stretches eastwardly from the Alleghanies
to the Delaware. Captain Huntington, having entered the army on the
outbreak of the war, like Colonel Keith rose to the rank of general,
and, like General Keith, received a wound that incapacitated him for
service. His wife was a Southern woman, and had died abroad, just at the
close of the war, leaving him a little girl, who was the idol of his
heart. He was interested in the South, and came South to try and
recuperate from the effects of his wound and of exposure during the war.
The handsomest place in the neighborhood of Elphinstone was "Rosedale,"
the family-seat of the Berkeleys. Mr. Berkeley had been killed in the
war, and the plantation went, like Elphinstone and most of the other
old estates, for debt. And General Huntington purchased it.
As soon as General Keith heard of his arrival in the neighborhood, he
called on him and invited him to stay at his house until Rosedale should
be refurnished and made comfortable again. The two gentlemen soon became
great friends, and though many of the neighbors looked askance at the
Federal officer and grumbled at his possessing the old family-seat of
the Berkeleys, the urbanity and real kindness of the dignified,
soldierly young officer soon made his way easier and won him respect if
not friendship. When a man had been a general at the age of twenty-six,
it meant that he was a man, and when General Keith pronounced that he
was a gentleman, it meant that he was a gentleman. Thus reasoned the
neighbors.
His only child was a pretty little girl of five or six years, with great
brown eyes, yellow curls, and a rosebud face that dimpled adorably when
she laughed. When Gordon saw her he recognized her instantly as the tot
who had given her doll to the little dancer two years before. Her eyes
could not be mistaken. She used to drive about in the tiniest of village
carts, drawn by the most Liliputian of ponies, and Gordon used to call
her "Cindy,"--short for Cinderella,--which amused and pleased her. She
in turn called him her sweetheart; tyrannized over him, and finally
declared that she was going to marry him.
"Why, you are not going to have a rebel for a sweetheart?" said her
father.
"Yes, I am. I am going to make him Union," she declared gravely.
"Well, that is a good way. I fancy that is about the best system of
Reconstruction that has yet been tried."
He told the story to General Keith, who rode over very soon afterwards
to see the child, and thenceforth called her his fairy daughter.
One day she had a tiff with Gordon, and she announced to him that she
was not going to kiss him any more.
"Oh, yes, you are," said he, teasing her.
"I am not." Her eyes flashed. And although he often teased her
afterwards, and used to draw a circle on his cheek which, he said, was
her especial reservation, she kept her word, even in spite of the
temptation which he held out to her to take her to ride if she
would relent.
One Spring General Huntington's cough suddenly increased, and he began
to go downhill so rapidly as to cause much uneasiness to his friends.
General Keith urged him to go up to a little place on the side of the
mountains which had been quite a health-resort before the war.
"Ridgely is one of the most salubrious places I know for such trouble as
yours. And Dr. Theophilus Balsam is one of the best doctors in the
State. He was my regimental surgeon during the war. He is a Northern man
who came South before the war. I think he had an unfortunate
love-affair."
"There is no place for such trouble as mine," said the younger man,
gravely. "That bullet went a little too deep." Still, he went
to Ridgely.
Under the charge of Dr. Balsam the young officer for a time revived, and
for a year or two appeared on the way to recovery. Then suddenly his old
trouble returned, and he went down as if shot. The name Huntington had
strong association for the old physician; for it was a Huntington that
Lois Brooke, the younger sister of Abigail Brooke, his old sweetheart,
had married, and Abigail Brooke's refusal to marry him had sent him
South. The Doctor discovered early in his acquaintance with the young
officer that he was Abigail Brooke's nephew. He, however, made no
reference to his former relation to his patient's people.
Division bitterer than that war in which he had fought lay between them,
the division that had embittered his life and made him an exile from his
people. But the little girl with her great, serious eyes became the old
physician's idol and tyrant, and how he worked over her father! Even in
those last hours when the end had unexpectedly appeared, and General
Huntington was making his last arrangements with the same courage which
had made him a noted officer when hardly more than a boy, the Doctor
kept his counsel almost to the end.
"How long have I to live, Doctor?" panted the dying man, when he rallied
somewhat from the attack that had struck him down.
"Not very long."
"Then I wish you to send for General Keith. I wish him to take my child
to my aunt, Miss Abigail Brooke."
"I will attend to it" said the Doctor.
"So long as she lives she will take care of her. But she is now an old
woman, and when she dies, God knows what will become of her."
"I will look after her as long as I live," said the Doctor.
"Thank you, Doctor." There was a pause. "She is a saint." His mind had
gone back to his early life. To this Dr. Balsam made no reply. "She has
had a sad life. She was crossed in love but instead of souring, it
sweetened her."
"I was the man," said the Doctor, quietly. "I will look after your
child."
"You were! I never knew his name. She never married."
He gave a few directions, and presently said: "My little girl? I wish to
see her. It cannot hurt me?"
"No, it will not hurt you," said the Doctor, quietly.
The child was brought, and the dying man's eyes lit up as they rested on
her pink face and brown eyes filled with a vague wonder.
"You must remember papa."
She stood on tiptoe and, leaning over, kissed him.
"And you must go to Aunt Abby when I have gone."
"I will take Gordon Keith with me," said the child.
The ghost of a smile flickered about the dying man's eyes. Then came a
fit of coughing, and when it had passed, his head, after a few gasps,
sank back.
At a word from the Doctor, an attendant took the child out of the room.
That evening the old Doctor saw that the little girl was put to bed, and
that night he sat up alone with the body. There were many others to
relieve him, but he declined them and kept his vigil alone.
What memories were with him; what thoughts attended him through those
lonely hours, who can tell!
General Keith went immediately to Ridgely on hearing of General
Huntington's death. He took Gordon with him, thinking that he would help
to comfort the little orphaned girl. The boy had no idea how well he was
to know the watering-place in after years. The child fell to his care
and clung to him, finally going to sleep in his arms. While the
arrangements were being made, they moved for a day or two over to Squire
Rawson's, the leading man of the Ridge region, where the squire's
granddaughter, a fresh-faced girl of ten or twelve years, took care of
the little orphan and kept her interested.
The burial, in accordance with a wish expressed by General Huntington,
took place in a corner of the little burying-ground at Ridgely, which
lay on a sunny knoll overlooking the long slope to the northeastward.
The child walked after the bier, holding fast to Gordon's hand, while
Dr. Balsam and General Keith walked after them.
As soon as General Keith could hear from Miss Brooke he took the child
to her; but to the last Lois said that she wanted Gordon to come
with her.
Soon afterwards it appeared that General Huntington's property had
nearly all gone. His plantation was sold.
Several times Lois wrote Gordon quaint little letters scrawled in a
childish hand, asking about the calves and pigeons and chickens that had
been her friends. But after a while the letters ceased to come.
When Elphinstone was sold, the purchaser was a certain Mr. Aaron
Wickersham of New York, the father of Ferdy Wickersham, with whom Gordon
had had the rock-battle. Mr. Wickersham was a stout and good-humored
man of fifty, with a head like a billiard-bail, and a face that was both
shrewd and kindly. He had, during the war, made a fortune out of
contracts, and was now preparing to increase it in the South, where the
mountain region, filled with coal and iron, lay virgin for the first
comer with sufficient courage and astuteness to take it. He found the
new legislature of the State an instrument well fitted to his hands. It
could be manipulated.
The Wickershams had lately moved into a large new house on Fifth Avenue,
where Fashion was climbing the hill toward the Park in the effort to get
above Murray Hill, and possibly to look down upon the substantial and
somewhat prosaic mansions below, whose doors it had sometimes been found
difficult to enter. Mrs. Wickersham was from Brookford, the same town
from which the Huntingtons came, and, when a young and handsome girl,
having social ambitions, had married Aaron Wickersham when he was but a
clerk in the banking-house of Wentworth & Son. And, be it said, she had
aided him materially in advancing his fortunes. She was a handsome
woman, and her social ambitions had grown. Ferdy was her only child, and
was the joy and pride of her heart. Her ambition centred in him. He
should be the leader of the town, as she felt his beauty and his
smartness entitled him to be. It was with this aim that she induced her
husband to build the fine new house on the avenue. She knew the value of
a large and handsome mansion in a fashionable quarter. Aaron Wickersham
knew little of fashion; but he knew the power of money, and he had
absolute confidence in his wife's ability. He would furnish the means
and leave the rest to her. The house was built and furnished by
contract, and Mrs. Wickersham took pride in the fact that it was much
finer than the Wentworth mansion on Washington Square, and more
expensive than the house of the Yorkes, which was one of the big houses
on the avenue, and had been the talk of the town when it was built ten
years before. Will Stirling, one of the wags, said that it was a good
thing that Mr. Wickersham did not take the contract for himself.
Mr. Wickersham, having spent a considerable sum in planning and
preparing his Southern enterprise, and having obtained a charter from
the legislature of the State that gave him power to do almost anything
he wished, suddenly found himself balked by the fact that the people in
the mountain region which he wished to reach with his road were so
bitterly opposed to any such innovation that it jeopardized his entire
scheme. From the richest man in that section, an old cattle-dealer and
lumberman named Rawson, to Tim Gilsey, who drove the stage from Eden to
Gumbolt Gap, they were all opposed to any "newfangled" notions, and they
regarded everything that came from carpet-baggers as "robbery and
corruption."
He learned that "the most influential man down there" was General Keith,
and that his place was for sale.
"I can reach him," said Mr. Wickersham, with a gleam in his eye. "I will
have a rope around his neck that will lead him." So he bought the place.
Fortunately, perhaps, for Mr. Wickersham, he hinted something of his
intentions to his counsel, a shrewd old lawyer of the State, who thought
that he could arrange the matter better than Mr. Wickersham could.
"You don't know how to deal with these old fellows," he said.
"I know men," said Mr. Wickersham, "and I know that when I have a hold
on a man--"
"You don't know General Keith," said Mr. Bagge. The glint in his eye
impressed the other and he yielded.
So Mr. Wickersham bought the Keith plantation and left it to Greene
Bagge, Esq., to manage the business. Mr. Bagge wrote General Keith a
diplomatic letter eulogistic of the South and of Mr. Wickersham's
interest in it, and invited the General to remain on the place for the
present as its manager.
General Keith sat for some time over that letter, his face as grave as
it had ever been in battle. What swept before his mental vision who
shall know? The history of two hundred years bound the Keiths to
Elphinstone. They had carved it from the forest and had held it against
the Indian. From there they had gone to the highest office of the State.
Love, marriage, death--all the sanctities of life--were bound up with
it. He talked it over with Gordon.
Gordon's face fell.
"Why, father, you will be nothing but an overseer."
General Keith smiled. Gordon remembered long afterwards, with shame for
his Speech, how wistful that smile was.
"Yes; I shall be something more than that. I shall be, at least, a
faithful one. I wish I could be as successful a one."
He wrote saying that, as he had failed for himself, he did not see how
he could succeed for another. But upon receiving a very flattering
reassurance, he accepted the offer. Thus, the General remained as an
employé on the estate which had been renowned for generations as the
home of the Keiths. And as agent for the new owner he farmed the place
with far greater energy and success than he had ever shown on his own
account. It was a bitter cup for Gordon to have his father act as an
"overseer"; but if it contained any bitterness for General Keith, he
never gave the least evidence of it, nor betrayed his feeling by the
slightest sign.
When Mr. Wickersham visited his new estate he admitted that Mr. Bagge
knew better than he how to deal with General Keith.
When he was met at the station by a tall, gray-haired gentleman who
looked like something between a general and a churchwarden, he was
inclined to be shy; but when the gentleman grasped his hand, and with a
voice of unmistakable sincerity said he had driven out himself to meet
him, to welcome him among them, he felt at home.
"It is gentlemen like yourself to whom we must look for the preservation
of our civilization," said General Keith, and introduced him personally
to every man he met as, "the gentleman who has bought my old place--not
a 'carpet-bagger,' but a gentleman interested in the development of our
country, sir."
Mr. Wickersham, in fact, was treated with a distinction to which he had
been a stranger during his former visits South. He liked it. He felt
quite like a Southern gentleman, and with one or two Northerners whom he
met held himself a little distantly.
Once or twice the new owner of Elphinstone came down with parties of
friends--"to look at the country." They were interested in developing
it, and had been getting sundry acts passed by the legislature with this
in view. (General Keith's nose always took a slight elevation when the
legislature was mentioned.) General Keith entertained the visitors
precisely as he had done when he was the master, and Mr. Wickersham and
his guests treated him, in the main, as if he were still the master.
General Keith sat at the foot of the table opposite Mr. Wickersham, and
directed the servants, who still called him "Master," and obeyed him
as such.
Mr. Wickersham conceived a great regard for General Keith, not unmingled
with a certain contempt for his inability to avail himself of the new
conditions. "Fine old fellow," he said to his friends. "No more
business-sense than a child. If he had he would go in with us and make
money for himself instead of telling us how to make it." He did not know
that General Keith would not have "gone in" with him in the plan he had
carried through that legislature to save his life. But he honored the
old fellow all the more. He had stood up for the General against Mrs.
Wickersham, who hated all Keiths on Ferdy's account. The old General,
who was as oblivious of this as a child, was always sending Mrs.
Wickersham his regards.
"Perhaps, she might like to come down and see the place?" he suggested.
"It is not what it used to be, but we can make her comfortable." His
glance as it swept about him was full of affection.
Mr. Wickersham said he feared that Mrs. Wickersham's health would not
permit her to come South.
"This is the very region for her," said the General. "There is a fine
health-resort in the mountains, a short distance from us. I have been
there, and it is in charge of an old friend of mine, Dr. Balsam, one of
the best doctors in the State. He was my regimental surgeon. I can
recommend him. Bring her down, and let us see what we can do for her."
Mr. Wickersham thanked him with a smile. Time had been when Mrs.
Wickersham had been content with small health-resorts. But that time was
past. He did not tell General Keith that Mrs. Wickersham, remembering
the fight between her son and Gordon, had consented to his buying the
place from a not very noble motive, and vowed that she would never set
her foot on it so long as a Keith remained there. He only assured the
General that he would convey his invitation.
Mr. Wickersham's real interest, however, lay in the mountains to the
westward. And General Keith gave him some valuable hints as to the
deposits lying in the Ridge and the mountains beyond the Ridge.
"I will give you letters to the leading men in that region," he said.
"The two most influential men up there are Dr. Balsam and Squire Rawson.
They have, like Abraham and Lot, about divided up the country."
Mr. Wickersham's eyes glistened. He thanked him, and said that he might
call on him.
Once there came near being a clash between Mr. Wickersham and General
Keith. When Mr. Wickersham mentioned that he had invited a number of
members of the legislature--"gentlemen interested in the development of
the resources of the State"--to meet him, the General's face changed.
There was a little tilting of the nose and a slight quivering of the
nostrils. A moment later he spoke.
"I will have everything in readiness for your--f--for your guests; but I
must ask you to excuse me from meeting them."
Mr. Wickersham turned to him in blank amazement.
"Why, General?"
The expression on the old gentleman's face answered him. He knew that at
a word he should lose his agent, and he had use for him. He had plans
that were far-reaching, and the General could be of great service
to him.
When the statesmen arrived, everything on the place was in order; they
were duly met at the station, and were welcomed at the house by the
owner. Everything for their entertainment was prepared. Even the fresh
mint was in the tankard on the old sideboard. Only the one who had made
these preparations was absent.
Just before the vehicles were to return from the railway, General Keith
walked into the room where Mr. Wickersham was lounging. He was booted
and spurred for riding.
"Everything is in order for your guests, sir. Richard will see that they
are looked after. These are the keys. Richard knows them all, and is
entirely reliable. I will ask you to excuse me till--for a day or two."
Mr. Wickersham had been revolving in his mind what he should say to the
old gentleman. He had about decided to speak very plainly to him on the
folly of such narrowness. Something, however, in the General's air again
deterred him: a thinning of the nostril; an unwonted firmness of the
mouth. A sudden increase in the resemblance to the man-in-armor over the
mantel struck him--a mingled pride and gravity. It removed him a hundred
years from the present.
The keen-eyed capitalist liked the General, and in a way honored him
greatly. His old-fashioned ideas entertained him. So what he said was
said kindly. He regretted that the General could not stay; he "would
have liked him to know his friends."
"They are not such bad fellows, after all. Why, one of them is a
preacher," he said jocularly as he walked to the door, "and a very
bright fellow. J. Quincy Plume is regarded as a man of great ability."
"Yes, sir; I have heard of him. His doctrine is from the 'Wicked Bible';
he omits the 'not.' Good morning." And General Keith bowed himself out.
When the guests arrived, Mr. Wickersham admitted to himself that they
were a strange lot of "assorted statesmen." He was rather relieved that
the General had not remained. When he looked about the table that
evening, after the juleps were handed around and the champagne had
followed, he was still more glad. The set of old Richard's head and the
tilt of his nose were enough to face. An old and pampered hound in the
presence of a pack of puppies could not have been more disdainful.
The preacher he had mentioned, Mr. J. Quincy Plume, was one of the
youngest members of the party and one of the most striking--certainly
one of the most convivial and least abashed. Mr. Plume had, to use his
own expression, "plucked a feather from many wings, and bathed his
glistening pinions in the iridescent light of many orbs." He had been
"something of a doctor"; then had become a preacher--to quote him again,
"not exactly of the gospel as it was understood by mossbacked
theologians, of 'a creed outworn,'" but rather the "gospel of the new
dispensation, of the new brotherhood--the gospel of liberty, equality,
fraternity." Now he had found his true vocation, that of statesmanship,
where he could practise what he had preached; could "bask in the light
of the effulgent sun of progress, and, shod with the sandals of Mercury,
soar into a higher empyrean than he had yet attained." All of which,
being translated, meant that Mr. Plume, having failed in several
professions, was bent now on elevating himself by the votes of the
ignorant followers whom he was cajoling into taking him as a leader.
Mr. Wickersham had had some dealing with him and had found him capable
and ready for any job. When he had been in the house an hour Mr.
Wickersham was delighted with him, and mentally decided to secure him
for his agent. When he had been there a day Mr. Wickersham mentally
questioned whether he had not better drop him out of his schemes
altogether.
One curious thing was that each guest secretly warned him against all
the others.
The prices were much higher than Mr. Wickersham had expected. But they
were subject to scaling.
"Well, Richard, what do you think of the gentlemen?" asked Mr.
Wickersham of the old servant, much amused at his disdain.
"What gent'mens?"
"Why, our guests." He used the possessive that the General used.
"Does you call dem 'gent'mens?'" demanded the old servant, fixing his
eyes on him.
"Well, no; I don't think I do--all of them."
"Nor, suh; dee ain't gent'mens; dee's scalawags!" said Richard, with
contempt. "I been livin' heah 'bout sixty years, I reckon, an' I never
seen nobody like dem eat at de table an' sleep in de beds in dis
house befo'."
When the statesmen were gone and General Keith had returned, old Richard
gave Mr. Wickersham an exhibition of the manner in which a gentleman
should be treated.